Tag Archives: life stories

When I’m not in the mood. Sad scenes from a gay bar

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Image: Charlie Marseilles

Matchstick Man stretched and showed his slender stomach. Lean, flat and toned. It was for my benefit, and he knew that I would be distracted by the neat wave of wispy hair that headed south of his Calvin Klein waistband. But he still claimed to be straight, and when I suggested otherwise, he simply laughed.

The tall handsome guy, maybe in his twenties, looked fine from a distance. When he came over, I found that he’d had lots of botox and talked about Donald Trump in a squeaky voice. 

An older man chatted me up, and said that I had a lovely smile. But I wasn’t in the mood, and played hard to get, and so I made an effort not to smile anymore. He called me an arrogant prick and left me alone. 

A group of guys stood next to me. One of them, who appeared to be wearing aluminium foil, thought he was the patron saint for confused gays. He pontificated that he knew more than anybody else and his friends agreed with him. I wanted to make a noise like a sheep but somebody beat me to it.

Two guys told a friend that when they got together they were both tops, and so they tossed a coin to decide who would be the bottom. 

Somebody behind me said something like, “Oh, poor love, poor heart, I played with your pain, I trampled on you with indifference!” – or words to that effect. I hoped that they were quoting from something, and this wasn’t part of their normal conversation, but somebody said, “I agree.”

The Angel grabbed me from behind and gave me a hug which I thought was sweet. He sat beside me and gave me a tour of his body tattoos. The last time I saw him, he insisted I speak to his grandmother on his mobile phone. It was an awkward conversation with somebody I didn’t know. She told me that he was ‘ a little shit’ because he forgets to take his ADHD medication and then he’s like a rabbit. My interpretation of a rabbit had been different to hers. Later… he ate pizza with his eyes closed and looked so tired that he may have drifted off at any moment.

The things I thought about while riding my Vespa today

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Artwork: Aditya Phadke

Why do people want me to write for free? If I want to do it for free, it’s because I’m doing it for myself. And don’t give me the ‘it’s good exposure’ bullshit. It’s because you don’t want to pay anything.

Why is it that when Charlie does the washing his whites come out white, and my whites come out pink?

Whose pair of black Calvin Klein boxer briefs are in the drawer? Not Charlie’s. Nor mine.

Do I believe the neighbour who says that her grandson, Owen, is doing fantastic? I thought he was worth a shot until I found out that he was a bit of a psycho. But there again, I have a weakness for bad boys. That answer might come another day.

I listened to a Beatles album and concluded that they are still boring.

Why does Sky Arts think that we are obsessed with Andre Rieu?

What was the attraction of Barbara Hepworth, and why are people obsessed with her work? 

After a one-night stand, why do things always turn out different when sunrise comes?

Why is it that you think you are so bloody handsome, and believe that everyone wants a piece of you, and then someone takes a photo, and you realise that you look a bit of a dork?

I’m on a beach with nothing to do except write shit on my phone

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Image: Readymoney Cove / PHG / 2025

Sometimes, you have nothing to do except watch and think. It’s Tuesday afternoon, it’s overcast, and I’m sitting on a beach… I tap random thoughts into my phone… and later, it reads like a diary, but also conjures up memories of being a child when we had ‘news books’ in which we wrote any drivel that might have happened.

This is my drivel…

Megan tells me a story about Peran of Polruan, with his salty brown legs, who lives alone in an old fisherman’s cottage called The Buoy. Never a visitor. Not a word to anyone. The girls think he’s a Cornish Saint and want to have sex with him. Every morning he catches the river ferry and returns at teatime. Where does he go? What does he do? On summer evenings he reads on the doorstep. I’m intrigued, but I want to know more about the books that he reads.

***

I’m looking for a bit of phwoar on the beach. I want a handsome young guy who strips to his shorts and goes swimming. But on this cloudy Tuesday afternoon I’m blessed with old ladies in one-piece costumes who do sedate breast-strokes to the pontoon and back. Shortly after four o’clock, a blonde schoolboy appears and parks himself close by. His shirt is untucked and the school tie hangs loose around his neck. From his bag, he pulls out a copy of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and starts reading. He seems happy being with Ralph and Jack, and I wonder which one of them he’s sympathetic to.

***

It’s been a month since I had a cigarette. I realise this whilst standing on the quayside. Instead, I’ve been using my Pro Max Double Apple – 10K puffs. What might you get up to with ten thousand puffs? Behind me, a sour-faced woman moans to her husband that I’m vaping. I turn around and give her a deadly look and she tuts. There wouldn’t have been any remorse if I’d pushed her into the sea.

***

“The Tesco delivery is coming tomorrow morning,” says Megan. She makes it sound like this is the highlight of the week. It might well be. She’s changed a lot since moving down here. Where is the Megan I once knew? The girl who drank Aperol Spritz by the dozen and got her tits out afterwards. “That’s exciting, I look forward to it,” I reply. She gives me a wicked look. “I was hoping that you might stay in and wait for him. I think that you’ll be less sarcastic after you’ve seen the Tesco guy.”

***

I write at the kitchen table with the door open and ignore the wasps that fly in and buzz above my head. I’ve realised that they soon get bored and leave the same way that they came. Megan appreciates my eclectic music tastes and has recommended an album called Senza Estate by My Friend Dario. It plays on my laptop while the wasps gather around the Corn Flakes. One of the tracks is called Keep on Cruising which is calming and innocent, and far removed from the cruising that I’m used to. 

An angel with black latex gloves / You’re not expecting anything to happen, and it doesn’t

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An angel with black latex gloves. He tells me that he suffers from eczema and that it is flaring up everywhere. He shows me his hands, arms and chest, but I can’t see anything. He says he even has it on his arse cheeks but isn’t brave enough to show me something that isn’t there.

He’s from Wythenshawe which means that he has five sisters, five younger brothers and an incestuous pit bull. His grey sweatpants keep disappearing up the crack of his arse and he keeps rubbing his dick. Every few minutes he flirts with girls and that pisses me off. A cock tease. Then he starts chatting with a lowlife lad next to me and I see that there is more to this than I like.

But he returns and says that I have beautiful blue eyes, and when he smiles, I notice that he’s wearing braces on his teeth, which is kinda cute. He turns his back and the tee-shirt says ‘authorised personnel only’.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent

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On the way to the bar I see Ed Sheeran busking outside the Town Hall. I take it in my stride because it is nothing compared to having a piss with Johnny Depp.

I think about Johnny Depp when a guy comes and stands next to me. He tells me that his name is Snuky and that his cock ‘reeks of fanny.’ I laugh, but can’t decide if it’s because he’s called Snuky, or because of what he’s just told me. He looks offended and says, ‘smell it if you don’t believe me.’ 

That moment / It’s not really what I want, so my attempts to get it will fail

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Joe was once off his head on something, and stuck his head through a plate glass window. I then spent the next hour saving his life. I remember being covered in blood and being incredibly angry. He had major surgery, but escaped with a huge gash on the bridge of his nose that was a bit too close to his eyes. In all fairness, he thanked me afterwards, and offered me his arse with a discount of twenty quid which I politely refused. Last night, I wasted another hour of my life staring at Joe’s crotch.